Destination

From a one-sentence chapter in These Festive Nights, excerpted in The Anansi Reader, translated by Sheila Fischman and published by Anansi in 2007.

. . . Luc and Jacques were sailing far away from the bedroom where they were both prisoners, thought Luc, surrounded by the heavenly music they could hear, one of them asleep, the other awake, his spirits brightened by alcohol, where were they sailing like this if God didn’t want them in His mansion, let them drift and sing as they used to when they went sailing with Paul, devoting themselves to underwater fishing, let the sun spread its warmth over them, let them laugh and sing and never know pain, rancour, anger, or humiliation, let them stream through the waves on their sailboards, run along the beaches, the sandy shores of the ocean, until dawn, or let them travel so far into the peace of the waters that they lost their way, with the stigmata on their bodies that were once so beautiful, let them disappear into the waves, fade away without voice or cry, while above them flickered those luminous green signals that guide ships in the night, in his sensual breathlessness Luc had often been touched by the sense of radiant intimacy with another, he experienced it now while listening to Mozart, those few brief seconds of pure, palpable love in the arms of men, those shoulders, those backs sealing a hidden authority, arching with delight under the caresses of his lips, the smell of those rough, voluptuous skins whose fears he untangled amid cries of deliverance, had he known anything more enduring on this earth, the brevity of those seconds, those moments, had overwhelmed his simple soul which asked for nothing more, and soon, perhaps, he would be alone, for he had seen the lights of the final hour flare up on the sea, each of those boats, those sailboats, would leave without him, in the glittering night, with opalescent globes at the summit of their masts, the young captain who had approached him on the beach an hour ago called his dog back to the gangway with a whistle, he had shut the door to his studious cabin, tonight he would open Conrad’s book, which he had not had time to read when he was cut off by a storm in the Bahamas, he would listen to Vivaldi while he sailed towards the Indian Ocean, heading for Madagascar, which would be his destination this time, the captain had first gone to sea at seventeen, he had seen Panama, Tahiti, he’d been imprisoned in Australia, in Costa Rica, he’d been wounded in one knee, his dog came running towards him along the gangway, they would all set off again without Luc, without Paul, each of these sailboats, each of these craft in the night . . .